Last August, a group of friends and I put together and performed the first-ever stand-up comedy night at CERN. It went rather well, so we decided to do it again. This year, we’re back as part of CERN’s 60th anniversary celebrations, with a completely new line-up of performers.

So, if you like comedy and/or science, take note: “Comedy Collider: no cause for conCERN” is on Friday, 13 June 2014 at 8pm CERN time (that’s European time, not some kind of weird physics concept – so 7pm UK time).

So that’s an event called “No cause for concern”. On Friday the 13th. See what we did there? Neither did we until I wrote this. Don’t worry; the jokes in the show will be better.

The event will showcase amateur comedy performances from three scientists, talking about their lives working at CERN. Expect talk of coffee, paradoxically lazy inventors, and lonely chairs. Almost no learning of physics facts is likely to occur. Promise.

Our amateurs have been practising a lot. They all have experience in giving scientific talks, and a little public outreach. But nothing quite like this. So, just in case they’re terrible, we’re seeking professional help for them. We’ve got Chella Quint (a veteran of events like Science Showoff) as host, musical interludes from Festival of the Spoken Nerd’s Helen Arney, and the headline set from TheBigVanTheory, a group of Spanish alumni from the science communication competition FameLab.

If you’re going to be in Geneva next week, you can book (free) tickets here. Alternatively, you can watch the event online. There will be plenty of interaction with the online audience. We’ll be keeping a close eye on the Twitter hashtag #noconCERN and using the best comments, pictures and physics puns in the show.

Meanwhile, if you happen to be at a loose end in Manchester this evening, check out the Collider exhibit all about CERN’s Large Hadron Collider at the Museum of Science and Industry. There’s a free event with extended opening hours and a great line-up of speakers and CERN scientists, including Clara Nellist, one of the Comedy Collider organisers. You might even bump into our MC Chella, too. While you’re at it, take a selfie with one of the exhibits and email it to comedy.collider@cern.ch; we’ll be featuring our favourites in the show.